You don't need Latte-Dock to look like Latte-Dock

Hey all,

I was one user that experienced lots of issues with Latte-Dock, like the black bar issue, and always hoped it would get fixed, but now the future is uncertain. I tried KSmoothDock, which I love as it's so simple to use! However, it didn't have real transparency and caused some slow downs.

I now use pure KDE Plasma panels in floating mode. The top one has the buttons for close, maximize, and minimise buttons, but only shown when the window is maximised. The bottom dock has the icon only task manager set to one row to get those nice, big buttons. For the screenshot, I set the bar to have windows go behind it so you can see (read as prove) that it has real transparency enabled. The only thing is that the icons glow when hovered over as apposed to grow in size. I normally have both panels set to have windows go above them, and when a window is maximised, I just move my mouse to the very top or bottom to make the panel appear. This way they are constantly visible with small or no windows. Being pure KDE Plasma, it's stable and fast. Hope you like the screenshot!

4 Likes

There are also some great widgets to help out with adding similar functionality that Garuda's default Latte-dock setup has.

One big one being "Active Window Control", and is totally worth the download. Even gives an easy option to remove the top bar of windows when you go maximized, so you can use Window Buttons / Global Menu you add to your top panel instead.

2 Likes

I'm confused. Is that different to what I have in the screenshot? I already have a global menu on the KDE Panel at the top. Not shown, but I do get the buttons when maximised.

I like my dock to be part of the top panel.

5 Likes

Oh? What do you use to achieve that? Does it also remove the top bar from the windows when maximized? (I know you can do with some file edits instead of that widget I mentioned)

Nice! I like to do something very similar. (picture of top of screen with Firedragon maximized)

1 Like

These are native Plasma widgets. I just searched and there's one to add the program name, so I just did, and didn't need to download the one you mentioned.

Here's a full screen maximised screenshot:

And here it is with my mouse cursor at the very top of the screen (maybe I should have turned on mouse cursor capture?):

EDIT: I added the application name quickly, so I think I might move it in between the buttons and menu widgets, so it looks better.

Right. forgot you said you had a floating panel, so I can see you have dolphin under it in the 2nd picture. I see what you mean now :sweat_smile:

I just opted to use a regular panel myself is all, so that is why I used what I did.

1 Like

I'm calling pure BS on this since Latte has one hell of alot more features than the default panel dores and depending on your tweaking of Latte you will not get the default KDE panel to look the same. As for the widgets if they work on the default panel they will work on Latte.

Not sure why you are getting all defensive. People have shown to make base plasma to their liking. No one is trying to deceive anybody here.

3 Likes

I smell betrayal :joy: jokes aside, it may look like plasma but doesn’t have that draggable top bar, so a no for me. Still cool, it shows the customisability of KDE :grin:

2 Likes

My main goal was to try to recreate the default Garuda look using only KDE Plasma widgets. The only 3rd party thing I did was to install the hack to make the bottom panel transparent. Normally, Latte or KSmoothDock would adjust in size based on the number of applications either pinned or open. KDE panels don't do that, so it's a floating panel (to push it away from the bottom edge of the screen) the entire length of the screen, thus it needs to be completely transparent to look right. The icons don't grow in size when hovered over, like with the previously named docks, but I'm getting use to it.

I agree that Latte Dock has a lot of customization to it, but that is also a double edged sword. For many users, me including, it is very unstable and runs poorly. It is now unmaintained and has an uncertain future. Many people have questioned the future of what's going to happen, espically with distros that use Latte Dock. In the past, to have a cool looking desktop, you did need to use third party software and download all sorts of widgets, but now, KDE Plasma has progressed to the point, where you can create something really cool, a bit like the Garuda Latte look and be light on resources with stability. But if you want icons that grow when mouse over, then you need 3rd party. I'm hoping KDE devs add something like that. We'll see.

2 Likes

To this day, i am still curious about the claims of "instability" that seem so common place for latte-dock. i realize i have only installed/used garuda on like 10 cpu/mobo/gpu combos, but i haven't encountered that problem at all.

2 Likes

Yeah same on my end. Latte works super well since day one 2 years ago on my main machine, including on all my VMs (using 3D acceleration) and 9 months ago on another machine totally different.

The common point? All run Garuda :smiley:

4 Likes

I honestly don't know why I have so many issues. Sometimes I needed to use the default settings restorer to make it work again. I've searched for solutions, but others have issues as well. It seems to be one of those things that will either work or not work. I would love to know why it's so unstable on my system as I really loved the features when they worked. Though, I have a feeling that if no new maintainer steps up, Latte will not be compatible with Plasma 6.

I swear its a “plan B” :rofl: . I haven’t encountered many issues with latte-dock (only minor graphical glitches on cloned displays but I am unsure if that is squarely latte-dock’s fault, and I don’t really clone displays often). Still, I wanted to be ready with a backup plan for when people had an issue with it that wasn’t easily fixed. For instance, my brother had issues lately and wanted me to change his UI over to base plasma, and I configured his similar to my setup that I had ready ahead of time.

I know you are only joking, but don’t get me wrong :rofl:. I still like latte-dock on one of my computers despite its quirks. The default layout is pretty nice even on a TV (thinking about changing my Wayfire mini-PC over to Dragonized because how nicely usable the defaults are on a TV).

4 Likes

This is annoying enough for me to switch. You may not come across this bug because it is only on Wayland.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459755

4 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.